government. for the president what he's going to try to do is say look, maybe things aren't so great but it is partly the fault of george w. bush and the republicans who were in office prior to the democrats taking control in 2009, so we need time to fix it, and by the way, the president will also say that he wants to increase taxes on people like mitt romney to help pay down some of that debt. >> reporter: we just put of that graphic there showing the $16 trillion of debt and there are so many digits it almost doesn't fit on the tv screen across the screen there, as you can see. but haven't americans in some way become number to astronomical numbers? how serious is this in. >> they have become number. is it the new normal this massive spilling of red ink but it raises three problems which i don't think the nation has got even to grips with yet. number one our economy is smaller than our debt. we look like europe, we know what happened there. number two we are spending $9 billion every week just